Ocean's Eleven
| Ocean's Eleven | |
|---|---|
| File:Ocean's 11 (2001) poster.jpg IMDB  7.5/10 (56,005 votes) | |
| Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Written by | George C. Johnson Jack G. Russell Harry Brown Charles Lederer Ted Griffin |
| Produced by | Jerry Weintraub |
| Starring | George Clooney Matt Damon Andy Garcia Brad Pitt Julia Roberts |
| Music by | David Holmes |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros |
Release dates | December 5, 2001 |
Running time | 116 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $85,000,000 |
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Ocean's Eleven is a 2001 remake of the 1960 Rat Pack caper film Ocean's Eleven. The 2001 movie was directed by Steven Soderbergh and starred George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Elliott Gould, Casey Affleck, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Andy Garcia, and Julia Roberts. The film was generally considered to be a success with both the box office and critics. In 2004, Soderbergh directed an original sequel, Ocean's Twelve. A second sequel is in the works, with the title Ocean's Thirteen, with a proposed release date of June 8, 2007.
Cast
- George Clooney as Danny Ocean
- Brad Pitt as Rusty Ryan
- Matt Damon as Linus Caldwell
- Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict
- Julia Roberts as Tess Ocean
- Casey Affleck as Virgil Malloy
- Scott Caan as Turk Malloy
- Shaobo Qin as 'The Amazing' Yen
- Bernie Mac as Frank Catton
- Don Cheadle as Basher Tarr
- Carl Reiner as Saul Bloom
- Eddie Jemison as Livingston Dell
- Elliott Gould as Reuben Tishkoff
Plot
Template:Spoiler Daniel Ocean (Clooney) recruits a team of specialized 'heist men' to rob three Las Vegas casinos: Bellagio, The Mirage and the MGM Grand, all of which store their money in a central, high-tech bank vault beneath the Bellagio. The man who owns these casinos, Terry Benedict (Garcia), is the lover of Danny Ocean's former wife, Tess (Roberts). As the plot unfolds it become apparent that part of the 'sting' is to trip up Benedict with regard to Tess, so that she'll come running back to Danny. With financing and backing from a wealthy ex-casino owner (who was bitter at the way he was bought out by Benedict), the robbers foil the elaborate security mechanisms to get to the vault.
Unlike the original film, in which the crew is made of 82nd Airborne veteran 'undetectable' amateurs, this crew is composed of underworld professionals; two with recent prison records which are utilized to the crew's advantage. It's much more similar to The Sting, than to the original Ocean's Eleven. (Some have also noted similarities to The Magnificent Seven, with Clooney and Pitt resembling Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen assembling their team.) The elaborate 'sting' involves a number of interlocked distractions which must be coordinated precisely. Benedict is the object of the 'sting', as well as the millions in the vault. The 'British' character, 'Basher', is the explosives man whose job it is to shut off the power to the city. The purpose of that, however, is ultimately only to allow two of the crew to rappel down an elevator shaft, and also to cause some distraction for casino security and monitoring. This is accomplished by a debilitating "electromagnetic pulse" generated by Basher's "pinch", an elaborate McGuffin with illuminated coils, which they steal at night from the fictitious California Institute of Advanced Science (apparently based at UC Irvine), with CIAS security guards just missing apprehending the Damon character.
In addition to a brief city-wide power outage, they need certain access codes to get inside to the elevator. These are updated daily, and are carried on Benedict's person. So Damon is the pickpocket. He is introduced to Benedict as a member of the Nevada Gaming Commission, tracking down a dealer who has a record. The dealer in fact is a plant, a member of the crew, who does have a record. And this enables Damon to get into the same room with Benedict when they question the dealer, played by Bernie Mac. This is also to extinquish any future suspicion of the disappearance of Mac's character from his work at the casino after the robbery. A staged scuffle is created, at which point Damon picks Benedict's pocket. Damon doubles back saying he forgot something, as Benedict hurries on to the fight.
A third element, another distraction, is created by Carl Reiner's character, posing as a nebulous and shady Russian money man. He convinces Benedict to let him store some jewels in the deep vault, overnight. In the process of doing so, he stages a heart attack to distract the local guards from seeing Damon doubling back.
Another element is control of that very surveillance video. As Damon doubles back, while Reiner stages the distraction, a third member cuts in with pre-shot video of empty hallways, and an empty elevator. Meanwhile, the security is worried about Reiner's character, as Pitt dashes in with two paramedics, also members of the crew, who declare Reiner 'dead' in order to get him out of there.
Clooney has joined Damon in the elevator shaft ready to rappel, and Pitt is wheeling away the 'dead' Reiner. Both get on cellphones to call their control center - blackout the town.
Meanwhile, the last element is the 'greaseman', a Chinese acrobat and contortionist, able to squeeze himself into tight spaces and leap around. He is concealed in a money cart, which is placed inside the vault. He exits the cart and jumps to shelving in the vault to avoid scanners that are knee or ankle high.
After the brief blackout, Clooney and Damon find themselves looking out the elevator at a short corridor at two guards in front of the vault. They use some pop-up grenade device to disable both. The 'greaseman' plants charges inside the vault. Clooney plants them outside. And the vault is blown. Meanwhile, surveillance shows something different than what is actually occurring inside the vault.
Finally, when ready, Pitt calls Benedict directly on a cellphone, which Clooney secretly dropped into Tess's pocket. Pitt says Benedict is being robbed. The video suddenly shows something different. And Benedict calls for the SWAT team.
Ultimately the crew steal the money. Whether they get away from Benedict in the months and years afterward is the subject of the sequel, Ocean's Twelve.
Trivia
- Andy Garcia's character is partially based on Steve Wynn, the developer behind Bellagio, The Mirage and Wynn Las Vegas. One of Andy Garcia's lines reads, "If you should be picked up buying a $100,000 sports car in Newport Beach, I'm going to be supremely disappointed." This is a reference to the real-life 1994 kidnapping of Steve Wynn's daughter, Kevyn Wynn, where one of the kidnappers was caught in Newport Beach a week after the incident trying to buy a Ferrari with cash.
- Other than the lead character, none of the robbers in the remake share names with robbers in the original, although they do exhibit some of their personality quirks.
- The two fighters featured in the boxing match sequence are Wladimir Klitschko and Lennox Lewis.
- At one point, the actors considered for roles in the film included Mike Myers, Ewan McGregor, Sydney Pollack, Warren Beatty, Dennis Franz, Ralph Fiennes, and Michael Douglas. Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bruce Willis,and Alan Arkin were all originally cast in the parts that were eventually played by Matt Damon, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Andy Garcia and Carl Reiner.
- Five "teen idols" make cameos as themselves during the scene where Rusty teaches them how to play poker: Holly Marie Combs, Topher Grace, Joshua Jackson, Barry Watson, and Shane West.
- In the movie, a pinch is stolen, and used to disrupt power in Las Vegas. Real life pinches wouldn't produce the required EMF—the scriptwriter may have been thinking of an Explosively pumped flux compression generator.
- An electromagnetic pulse will permanently, not temporarily, destroy circuitry which it overloads.
- The concept of a casino needing to house money to cover every chip in play on its floor is false.
- In the DVD audio commentary Brad Pitt reveals that the wig he used for the doctor disguise was the rehearsal wig used in the Austin Powers series.
- In the DVD commentary Steven Soderbergh and Ted Griffin acknowledge a certain plot hole: How did the crew get the flyers of the hookers in the vault in the first place?
- Steven Soderbergh also has a cameo in the movie, playing one of the bank robbers with Basher that the LVPD catch.
- Another plothole noted by the actors in the commentary is that Ocean is heard speaking to the tough guy in the room, as an accomplice, shortly after they are left alone, all the while outside the bodyguards stand. Yet the bodyguards were supposed to hear even the quiet, muffled cries of the torturer, faking Ocean's presence after Ocean has left through a vent in the ceiling.
- Siegfried and Roy have a cameo appearance in the movie.
- Henry Silva and Angie Dickinson appear in brief cameos during the boxing sequence in the film. Silva played part of the crew and Dickinson a love interest in the original film.
- The song that plays as Danny is released from prison and continues to play over the main titles is titled "Rodney Yates" and is not featured on the soundtrack. It is however featured on David Holmes' (the score composer) 1997 album Let's Get Killed (which also featured the original version of "Gritty Shaker").
- The character Basher Tarr, which is played by Don Cheadle, plays a similar role in the remake that Sammy Davis Jr. played in the original. Incidentally, Cheadle played Davis in the 1998 HBO TV movie The Rat Pack.
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